Original subtitles

Most of us love going on a journey.

I've been incredibly lucky, exploring countries

on six different continents.

Now that travel has become a bit tricky, it's not a bad time

to have a look back.

In this series, I'm going to be showing you some of

my most memorable adventures.

WHISTLE BLOWS

HORN BLARES

We're on the way.

The landscape is incredible.

The vegetation everywhere you look - green!

All different shades of green.

If you're going to try and imagine paradise,

that's it.

And this, this is a real treasure of Haiti.

I've met hundreds of incredible people.

Hello, my friend. Welcome to Libya.

SIREN BLARES

Welcome to El Salvador! Thank you, mate.

Welcome to Uzbekistan. SHE LAUGHS

I'll be catching up with some of them.

VIDEO: ..Because they're cheap, they have nimble fingers...

Oh, mate!

This is a land of utter extremes, this is where heaven and hell

are said to collide.

And I'll be sharing what I've learned on my travels...

I have no words, just good luck, OK? Thank you. Good luck.

What ever you do. Good luck.

..about the challenges and the solutions for our incredible planet.

There are buffalo once more on the American plain,

and that's a bloody wonderful thing.

Ready...

HE LAUGHS

Good boy!

I've had a bit more time at home recently.

Somebody's not complaining!

Come on, ready?

Ah!

That'll keep him quiet for a moment.

I love the landscapes of our planet, the wildlife, the food.

But for me, I think the strongest travel experiences are encounters

with people, and the very human stories that I hear.

So in this programme, we're going to be showing you and introducing

you to some of the most incredible characters I've met on my travels.

Ali! Ali!

Assalamu alaikum, Ali.

I think people are the reason to travel.

This is Ali the Lion. Honour to meet you.

There was Ali the Lion, a tribal leader

from the southern Egyptian desert. What is this?

Aren't you supposed to do something like twirling the sticks together

or something? This is cheating!

He showed me some legendary Bedouin hospitality.

It's delicious.

Bloody hell!

What are you laughing about?

THEY LAUGH

Majd Mashharawi, a Palestinian inventor,

had come up with a way of making bricks from the ashes of conflict.

THEY CHEER

People around me said, "You're crazy if you want to go back."

But I left for the reason to help my people, so I have to come back.

So this is Father Andreas.

THEY LAUGH

And it's hard to forget the Greek priest whose hobbies

seemed to be urban warfare.

Thank you.

GUN COCKS

RAPID GUNSHOTS

You do love your guns.

I've travelled through more than 130 countries -

and there's one in particular where people are always welcoming

and inspiring.

How are you? I'm very well, thank you. How are you?

I first visited Bangladesh in 2010.

At the mouth of the Ganges, it's a beautiful maze

of waterways and rivers.

My guide in Bangladesh was a very special chap.

Tanjil, say hello. Hello.

I'm Simon. And I'm Tanjil.

In Bangladesh, Tanjil Rahman has shown me around

every side of this remarkable country...

Oh!

..and its unique culture.

WHISTLE BLOWS

Yeah, you played good. You played good.

Your movement and your... Everything was kind of perfect -

as a beginner.

HE EXHALES

Welcome to Dhaka!

SIMON LAUGHS

Look at that way...and that way.

But he's also opened my eyes to the reality of life,

including in the slums of the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka,

really memorable and moving human stories.

As we've been walking along, we've gathered, like the Pied Pipers,

a small little group of urchins around us.

And what they do is walk around,

walk around the streets, collecting up fragments of plastic or glass,

bottles, any bits that they can recycle.

Can we have a look in here?

Can we see?

So, look, plastic bottles in here.

Aluminium cans. Yeah.

And then they'll sell them to a recycling shop.

It's quite hard to see four-year-olds, five-year-olds

working on the streets barefoot like that.

The more back streets we went down, the more I learnt

about the country's child labour problem.

This is it here?

God, can you hear the furnace going?

FURNACE ROARS

Even a child-sized entrance.

Tanjil took me to a glass-recycling factory where they were making

bottles for export to South Korea.

Good God.

This is Jahangir. Jahangir.

Hello, Jahangir. Very nice to meet you.

Jahangir, who was ten at the time,

was working a full shift every day for the equivalent of about 30p,

but enough to buy a small bag of rice for his family.

Why did you put that one in there, Jahangir?

TANJIL TRANSLATES

Ah.

It's basically quality control, isn't it?

I can still remember how hot it felt in there.

It was 40 degrees outside, and the heat by the furnace

was almost unbearable.

The fumes coming from the furnace,

they're really choking.

And we're just here for a few minutes.

So, he's taking us up to see where he...

..where he sleeps with his mum and his sister,

and can you see his sister is barefoot?

In a glass factory.

This is his bed. Just right here?

And is it just your family here, or are there more people who live here?

Do you find it hard, working in the factory?

Why did Mum want you to come and live here?

Why did Mum want you to come to the glass factory?

There have been huge efforts to eradicate the scourge

of child labour, but still today it's estimated that in the world's

poorest countries, one in four children go out to work.

There's a shift change, new operator.

This operator, can you show us your arm?

At that moment, it seemed obvious to me these kids should be stopped

from working immediately, but the older labourers wanted me

to understand the possible consequences if some children

were prevented from working and earning a living.

These men started working between the ages of nine and 11.

They were adamant simply banning child labour overnight could

create more suffering, not less.

If you ban child labour and reduce the ability of kids and families

to feed themselves, there needs to be alternatives -

government help for the poor and education for all.

Not always forthcoming in Bangladesh.

But the United Nations children's agency UNICEF had set up centres

for working children, and little Jahangir took me to visit one.

So, this is the centre.

Oh, my good God!

Oh, my goodness!

Hello. ALL GREET HIM

HE GREETS THEM IN BENGALI

Jahangir, you've got a lot of friends here!

Gundu. Gundu.

Gundu.

The centre was giving children a free lunch and a shower,

space to learn and have fun.

Years later, it's still going strong, offering a basic education

that can help break an endless cycle which sees generation

after generation stuck in illiteracy and poverty.

Jahangir, tell us, what do you like about coming to the centre?

This is your favourite thing about the centre, is playing this game?

What about your friends?

Good boy!

I felt really outraged seeing how child labour was blighting

the lives of so many kids, and I can still remember

what a difference even just a few hours at that centre made

to Jahangir. That experience, that encounter really taught me

that you can't always just follow your knee-jerk reaction,

and that an issue like child labour can be so much more complex

close up than it can appear from thousands of miles away.

I don't always get to find out what happened to people after I film

with them, but in Jahangir's case, we do know what happened next

because the lovely people at UNICEF in Bangladesh have kept in touch

with him, and they've sent me a video with a bit of an update.

Bloody hell.

Wow.

Look at him now!

Jahangir is now 20 years old. He's married with a son...

..and he works as his own boss,

driving a battery-powered rickshaw taxi.

And according to the UNICEF team, who are still in touch with him,

he's hoping to provide a proper education for his son.

Oh, it's so lovely!

SIMON LAUGHS

They've shown him a video of our film!

VIDEO: The fumes coming from the furnace...

Why did you put that one in there, Jahangir?

They have nimble fingers and they complain less than adults.

Oh, mate!

Oh!

My goodness! It made such an impact on me, filming with him.

He was such a sweet young lad,

and I had no idea how his life would turn out,

whether he would even survive to adulthood.

Can you believe it?

Oh!

I've met so many thousands of people across the years

and around the world held back by their circumstance,

whether war or poverty or prejudice.

But given half a chance, we can all flourish.

Almost anyone can be almost anything.

But all too often people don't get the chance or the luck

to make the most of their abilities.

It's the end of our journey across Bangladesh.

I've loved every minute of it.

It's packed and poor, but it's a beautiful, beautiful

country, and I'm really sorry to go.

Today, the people of Bangladesh still face enormous challenges,

but the proportion of them living in extreme poverty has halved

since 2000, and more and more children are being educated.

Farewell, mate.

Thank you very much indeed.

Thank you, sir.

Bye-bye, mate. I feel quite emotional. Yes. I am also.

Yeah. All right. We had a good time.

We had a very good time. We'll remember that.

I'll see you again. Yeah.

Until recently, the proportion of the world's people

living in extreme poverty had been falling dramatically.

HE GASPS

..that really nice view. My God! Look at that!

However, another dangerous phenomenon has been growing rapidly

around the world, and I've seen it with my own eyes. Inequality.

The wealth here

is just unbelievable.

Oh, bloody hell, this one - look - this one's got a helicopter on it!

The gap between rich and poor is becoming a widening gulf.

The number of billionaires in the world has quadrupled

in the last 20 years.

There's now more than 2,000 of them, and their net worth is equivalent

to that of the poorest four billion people.

It's a mad world, eh?

Sometimes, just around the corner from people living on a few dollars

a day, there exists luxury on a staggering scale.

For the lucky few, it's a world of luxury.

Hola!

I feel a bit out of place here, I tell you.

Something the cat brought in.

Hello.

Like at this flash hotel in Mexico.

Look at this!

Everybody touches their heart. It's quite moving.

It's our own one and only salute.

Or this 500-room hotel in Turkey...

Welcome to Mardan Palace. Thank you very much indeed.

..which apparently cost £1 billion to build.

Wow! Look at the size of the chandeliers!

I was going to say singular but plural. Yes, five chandeliers.

I look at it and I worry about the cleaning.

We have a special team. I'm sure you do.

Yeah, yeah. I'm sure you do.

This is our four-bedroom villa.

It has the spa,

their own gym, the media room,

and this is the entertainment area.

So how much does this cost per night?

$8,000 to $12,000 per night.

15,000 euro per day.

15,000 euros per day.

Who is this gentleman who's walking around? Who's this? Your butler.

What do you mean, MY butler?

He will assist you during your stay. Our guest.

Are you suggesting I am staying here?

I'm staying here? Yes.

Hello, by the way. Hello. Merhaba. Merhaba.

Simon. Nice to see you again.

I didn't realise you were going to be, you know,

accompanying us into the room.

THEY LAUGH

It's very nice to see you. Yes.

HE EXHALES

Look at this!

This is the most how-the-other-half-live place

I think I've ever been to.

Just to be absolutely clear, we are not paying thousands of pounds

for me to stay in this hotel room. No letters to Points Of View,

all right? Or the Daily Mail!

Research shows again and again

that unequal societies are the least happy.

One place where the gap between rich and poor

is at its most glaring is California.

Just recently, I travelled the length of America's richest state.

Look! The Pacific!

It is stunning.

The wealth here is just on another level.

Los Angeles has been called the City of Dreams,

but it has staggering levels of homelessness.

Tens of thousands sleep rough in LA every night,

many more than in other US cities.

Yet this is also the City of Angels.

Hello!

They're a stoic, memorable and inspiring people.

I spent a day with Brett and Gabrielle, two street medics,

part of a team of doctors and paramedics

who provide free health care to some of the city's rough sleepers.

In a more traditional clinic, you could just put tape on this,

but in this environment

Doug is going to be exposed to the weather, to the... You know,

to some dirt or whatever,

so we wrap up with this to protect it.

It's all the way, the whole length of the freeway.

What is? Where they live, inside the bridge. Goes all the way.

What, inside the structure here? Yep, right inside.

WOMAN CALLS

This is extraordinary. How are you?

There are voices coming from inside it.

Hello. Hi. So, erm, our friends from Great Britain,

and they're doing a video on the way some folks are living here.

Come inside. Thank you so much.

Shall we follow you in? Sure.

Hey, Amy. Hi.

Thank you for letting us in.

No problem.

TRAIN RUMBLES OVERHEAD

Well...these guys are.

I'm like a sort of really cheap, shoddy version, yeah.

You just haven't gotten old yet.

I know. Well, I think it's a bit more than that, but thank you.

Are you a big fan of David Attenborough?

I'm a huge fan of David Attenborough.

Do you get to see his documentaries here?

I don't get to watch a lot of video here, the power is a problem,

but I do listen to a lot of podcasts here, so...

Do you?

TRAIN RUMBLES OVERHEAD

I'm trying to take in the artwork...

I thought it was a freeway, but, actually, it's the train above.

The trains aren't 24 hours, are they?

They stop for about three hours,

like, between midnight and 4.00.

TRAIN RUMBLES OVERHEAD

Are you a light sleeper?

No. All right.

That's probably for the best.

Is it you who's done much of the painting here?

I've done all of the painting.

I usually call it "the mansion".

This place is giant, and it gets taller as you go back.

Does it? There's a couple of rooms that, you know,

I think of as the ballroom and the room where the pool will be,

and that sort of thing.

But, yeah, that's my joke with myself.

SHE LAUGHS

TRAIN RUMBLES OVERHEAD

Do you feel safe here?

Yeah.

You know, there's really only one way in

and the dog scares people quite quickly.

What the hell is going on, Amy?

There's tens of thousands of people in Los Angeles living homelessly.

Welfare is really not something Americans understand any more.

It's a weird thing.

There's so much moral judgment about people.

I think it's mostly fear, though.

Like, the closer they get,

the more they want to distance themselves from it

in case somehow relating makes them susceptible to it.

TRAIN RUMBLES OVERHEAD

Thanks for letting us in, Amy.

It was a pleasure to meet you.

I've seen a lot of stuff around the world.

I would never have thought, in the United States, I would see this.

Thank God you're out here doing what you do.

Since we filmed with her,

the authorities moved Amy out of the bridge.

She's now bedding down in a new location.

Brett still checks on her regularly.

I think of her often.

Amy has to be one of the most memorable people

that I've met on my travels,

and I think it's so easy for us to dismiss the homeless,

rough sleepers, as "the other", and imagine that we could never be them,

that we would never end up in their shoes.

But life so often turns on chance,

a nudge or a push there.

It can just be a bit of bad luck, a bad decision.

Personally, I know that...

I had some very tough years in my teens, and I could have lived

a very different, much more difficult life.

I don't come from wealth or great privilege.

I grew up in a very ordinary family,

in a very normal part of west London called Acton.

I flunked out of school without any real qualifications,

and I spiralled down into a very dark place.

About as dark as it can get.

But going on benefits actually really helped me, claiming welfare,

because when I signed on, I was talking to the lady there,

and she said, "Don't think too far ahead.

"Take things slowly. Take them step by step."

It really helped me to get through a very difficult time in my life.

It became a bit of a mantra that I still live by today.

There are millions of good souls out there in the world

making a huge difference to the lives of others.

In 2011, my travels took me to a project that was helping people

in one of the most troubled corners of the globe.

I was heading to Somaliland.

Officially a part of Somalia, nearly 30 years ago,

it broke away and declared itself independent.

Thank you. Thank you.

Hello, hello! Hi!

I was catching up with an old friend,

and one of those good souls -

Fatima Ibrahim - who I'd met on my first trip

to this unrecognised country five years earlier.

Fatima grew up in Wales, but came back after 40 years

to help rebuild Somaliland following its years of conflict.

Take your pick. There you are.

Oh, my goodness. That one to that one...

You mean this is how we change money? Yes.

On the streets. On the streets.

Somaliland is relatively safe and secure.

Money changes here work safely in the open,

and serve it up in brick-loads.

How much is this worth? Eight. $8.

Yes. OK, so, about £6.

We need some money for the next few days.

We're going to start with $400,

and see if we can carry it.

Is this all ours? This is your money.

Oh, no, just feel free! Give us more.

That's ours, as well?

Into the... Whoa!

Have you ever seen such a sight?

Somaliland has democracy and stability,

but it's still only recognised by a handful of countries.

It's dealing with its many challenges largely on its own,

including thousands of refugees from war in neighbouring Somalia,

many of them young men lacking purpose.

Some had been targeted by recruiters for brutal militant groups.

We've met up with Mohammed here, who lives in the camp,

and he's just going to take us back to his home.

You've been here three years.

What led you to come to the camp?

What led you to come to Somaliland?

FATIMA TRANSLATES

Mohammed had trekked 500 miles to come here with his family.

Eight of them were sharing this tiny shack.

To help keep boys and young men from the refugee camps

away from militant groups, Fatima was running a project

offering help, education, a future and some fun.

She invited me along on an outing she'd organised to the seaside.

Fatima, why are you doing this?

Why are you taking them to the coast?

For children who have actually witnessed murders

and people being killed in front of them...

So, they have no childhood.

There's no sense of what childhood should be like.

You're drawing them away from potentially bad things

that they could be doing, things like piracy,

joining gangs or joining militias.

We're going to the coast! This is exciting.

Put your hands up if you haven't seen the sea before.

Whoa! This is very exciting!

Mohammed, you've never seen the sea?

Never? Whoa!

What's "we're going to the seaside" in Somali?

FATIMA TRANSLATES

SIMON REPEATS PHRASE

Yes.

SIMON SHOUTS PHRASE

Yeah!

Look. Can you see the ship out there, Mohammed?

We're here.

Come on, let's get off. OK.

Let's go to the sea.

My goodness!

It's beautiful.

Beautiful!

For the first time,

I think it's quite a privilege for me to be here with you.

Look, feel it!

The Indian Ocean, Mohammed.

Yes. The Indian Ocean!

Indian Ocean.

There you go.

A tiny crab, look.

I have some really powerful memories from that part of the world,

and Somalia is where I picked up my favourite ever travel souvenir.

I was able to buy a Somali diplomatic passport,

with my own name and my own terrible photograph in...

..from a man called Mr Big Beard.

It's not a bad souvenir, is it?

I didn't go on exotic foreign holidays when I was a lad.

There's me and my brother James there,

on a beach, somewhere along the south coast.

I didn't get on a plane

until I was an adult and I started working,

so I don't take any of this for granted.

It was really getting a job when I was on the dole

that turned my life around.

I didn't go to university,

I started out working as a post boy on a newspaper.

Yes, sorting the post.

But within quite a short space of time there,

I was doing a bit of research and some writing.

I've got my old cuttings book here.

So strange to get this out.

I haven't looked at this for at least 20 years.

But this is the first piece, as it were, that I got my name on.

It wasn't even the piece.

I just did this box, did a bit of research for it,

and they very kindly put my name on it.

"Compiled by Simon Reeve"

in size 8 font.

My family was so proud of this.

Doors began to open for me there.

I was given responsibility and a chance,

and within a few years I went from being a terrified,

suicidal teenager to a writer.

For years, I worked on investigations,

sometimes undercover,

and wrote several books on terrorism.

In the aftermath of 9/11, I began travelling more extensively.

Ooh, no!

Ooh!

And I found myself on the road in Central Asia

with a camera pointed in my face.

We've just suddenly come across this old Soviet missile testing site,

as you do when you're in Kazakhstan.

2003, my first TV adventure -

a journey through the area north of Afghanistan...

We're driving across what used to be the sea,

..to Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

Many of my first TV trips were to countries that had been part

of the Soviet Union, which had collapsed a decade earlier,

often into chaos and conflict.

The front line here is still very dangerous.

There was a guy killed here just last weekend.

Right from the start...

God, look at that.

..it felt like I'd gone off the map...

I'm not sure it works with the trainers.

..into places where anything was possible.

Mr President.

Like bumping into the President of Georgia in a lift.

..BBC, hello. Nice to see you.

Nice to see you, too.

Or being forced to play a bonkers sport...

..where the ball is replaced by a headless goat!

Even the Taliban outlawed this for being immoral!

I even had a tour of a rather sinister-sounding research centre

for dangerous viruses and diseases.

And these? Plagues.

Plague? This plague is in here?

Plague, plague, plague, plague, plague.

That's a lot of plague.

Yes.

I've now travelled fairly extensively around the planet.

Rita? Yes.

Hello, Rita.

In almost every country there's been a guide,

or fixer, as we sometimes call them...

Tariq!

..welcoming me...

Welcome.

Amra, hello!

..and, more importantly, you to their patch of the planet.

Simon.

Hello, nice to meet you, finally.

Like Batsola, my guide in Madagascar,

who insisted I try a national dish,

featuring a very particular cut of meat

from the local Zebu cattle.

We eat Zebu crock.

Crock? Crock. Penis? Yes.

Zebu penis. Why?

Is good.

In England you have tea, here we have soup.

You have soup? Yeah.

And there is different kind of soup and one of them zebu cock soup.

I know what's going to happen now.

Cut to a restaurant.

I know this is going to happen, I might as well just surrender.

Maybe we need to wait for it to cool down. Yes, yes.

Oh, my God!

It's still moving.

Ready? I feel like I'm crossing my legs now.

Oh, my God.

Here we go. Come on, then, be brave.

It tastes sort of like...

..gelatine.

A blob of... Oh!

With a slight...

..a light kick in it.

I swear to God, I think I can taste urine.

Not all of my guides are on our side.

In some countries, the governments

require us to have an official agent travelling with us,

monitoring and even spying on us.

We call them minders.

In 2010, I travelled overland, across the Sahara Desert,

to Libya, just a year before the fall of its notorious dictator,

Colonel Gaddafi.

HE GROANS

And we've arrived.

This is Libya.

This is the Acacous Tourist Hotel.

The gentleman behind me, though, is our government minder.

He looks like a mini Colonel Gaddafi.

Anyway, this is where we're staying tonight,

and then we start heading east.

CLATTERING

Bloody hell!

Broken the bloody door!

Look, well, if there's any doubt about where we are,

the man himself.

I'll just fix the door.

Ahmed was one of our jollier minders.

Oh, thank you very much.

But several people told me his likeness to Colonel Gaddafi

wasn't actually a coincidence.

Can I ask you... Yes? ..has anybody told you that you look

like Colonel Gaddafi?

Ah!

My grandfather before...

Back. OK, back.

Back. Yes, yes. OK.

In Mecca. In Mecca. Yes.

My grandfather and grandfather Gaddafi...

..brothers. Brothers. Yes.

So not only do you look like Colonel Gaddafi,

but you are related to Colonel Gaddafi.

Gaddafi. And we're going to go swimming together.

Is good.

It's good, but it's cold. Yes.

Any crocodiles here?

Snakes?

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no!

No, no, no, no, no, no.

Are you sure? Very nice.

It's amazing! Swim, swim, my friend.

Swim. All right.

Sun and water and Sahara...

..and my friend, good friend.

Thank you, my God.

If I'm not meeting people and learning about their lives,

I'm not on a proper journey.

They're experiences to treasure.

Travelling around the Mediterranean

took me to the Italian island of Sicily.

Look at Mount Etna!

Sicily is stunning,

but for decades, people on the largest island in the Med

have lived under the shadow of Cosa Nostra -

the Sicilian Mafia.

I travelled through the island's rugged interior

with my friend and fixer in Italy, Lorenzo Tondo.

OK, they got it.

We're going to follow them.

So the Land Rover in front has got some farmers inside -

three sisters who we are following to their patch of the planet.

It's such a privilege to step inside people's lives just briefly

and hear their story.

And for me, it's still the point of travelling.

Salve! Ciao! Ciao, ciao, ciao, ciao!

Marianna, Ina and Irene's family

have farmed wheat and hay on these highlands for generations.

So you've got quite a large, beautiful patch of land here,

haven't you?

What's happened here?

Are we being... Are we being press-ganged here?

Come on! We're happy to help.

It's wet. That's why it's so heavy. I know! Argh! Oh, no!

OK! OK!

Grazie, grazie.

Grazie, Simon. Grazie.

It's an idyllic but tough life up here,

made infinitely harder by a curse many Italians thought

was largely a thing of the past.

They poisoned your dogs?

When you say THEY are doing classic intimidation,

who is they?

Many people are saying the Sicilian Mafia has been beaten,

has been destroyed.

The Sicilian mafia, Cosa Nostra, has been partly neutered

by a clamp-down. With bosses in prison and drug networks disrupted,

it had been battered but not destroyed. A Mafiosi

had retreated to their rural heartlands and were using extortion

and intimidation to grab valuable land.

The sisters, though, were having none of it, defiantly

rebuilding their perimeter fence.

You're heroes. Keep fighting.

You're Italian heroes. You really are. Mm!

There are so many brave and inspiring people out there.

It's humbling to see the risks ordinary people, campaigners

and investigative journalists are all prepared to take to tell us

about the situation where they live.

Daphne's car transformed into a ball of fire with her inside.

The world can be a particularly dangerous place for journalists -

556 have been killed in the last decade.

SIRENS WAIL

In 2010, I travelled to Culiacan in Mexico.

It was the most violent peak of the brutal war

between the authorities and the drug cartels.

I met up with a legendary Mexican investigative writer

called Javier Valdez.

Does it feel like Culiacan is under siege

from the drug gangs?

Javier spoke truth to power. He wrote

fearlessly about the cartels and also corruption in Mexico.

Javier has since been murdered for his work.

He was gunned down in the street by cartel killers.

Another phenomenally dangerous place to be a journalist or campaigner

is Burma, or Myanmar.

For decades, this beautiful country was and has been dominated

by a repressive and powerful military.

In 2010, very few people dared to speak up against the dictatorship

that had the country in its grip.

But one rare voice prepared to take incredible risks

was a campaigner called Cheery Zahau.

Hi! Cheery!

Oh, my goodness!

When I last saw Cheery...

Cheery! Can I come in?

Oh, my God!

..it was an emotional reunion.

A few years before, she'd risked her life

to show me and a couple of brave colleagues what life

was like inside Burma.

Minorities were being horrifically oppressed, including the ethnic

group Cheery was from, the Chin people.

Cheery was living in exile abroad at the time.

She didn't need to go back into Burma, but she wanted to.

She agreed to smuggle me into the country to show

what was really going on there.

It was among the riskiest things I've ever done, but it was even

more dangerous for Cheery.

So that's in Burma? Yeah, that's in Burma.

It's always dangerous when you go to Chin State. When you go to Burma,

you don't know what will happen, really. Um...

Yeah, they don't want me to be there.

They put me on the wanted list in 2007, but... You're actually

on the Burmese military wanted list, are you?

I didn't know that. Yeah, they said that I am...

..being empowered by the Western rich nations,

and now I try to disunite the Union of Myanmar.

To get into Burma, we needed to cross the river that marked

the border with India.

God, he's in the water!

For some reason, one of the people waiting for us on the other side

began swimming towards us.

They saw some people hiding from some troops, hiding out there.

Sorry, Cheery...

Just trying to get my head round this - what are you saying?

You're saying that Burmese troops are hiding just round the corner?

Yeah. They just saw now.

God, I feel sick!

I don't know what to say, really.

I'm just a bit shocked.

Suddenly, soldiers appeared.

This was a nerve-racking moment. Had we narrowly avoided an ambush?

I don't know.

A few minutes later, we were told the troops were not actually

from the Burmese army after all.

So who are the soldiers? The Chin National Army -

insurgency groups fighting against the Burmese regime.

So, crucially, they're your friends? Yeah.

OK.

We decided to stick to the plan, and it turned out the villagers

had their own makeshift way of crossing the river.

Here goes!

Bloody hell!

Oh!

OK, well, here goes. Ready? Off we go to Burma. Are you ready?

Yeah, as I'll ever be.

Bloody hell!

HE GREETS THEM

Whoo!

We've arrived.

We've travelled from the world's largest democracy on that side

of the river to one of the most repressive countries in the world

on this side.

All right, we've got a long walk.

Let's get going.

The further we trekked, the deeper we went into what felt

like enemy territory.

There were dozens of Burmese army bases in the area

and thousands of troops.

How does it feel to be back here, Cheery? A bit fearful. Fearful?

Yeah, the Burmese troops are not so far from here.

It's why the villagers are always, um...

..be careful and scared of the Burmese troops.

Whenever they are there,

it involves forced labour, extortion, sometimes rape

against women, and child labourers.

The Burmese military really are an occupying force in Chin State?

Yeah, Chin State and all over Burma.

Oh, my goodness!

There's huts! Huts!

SCREAMING

You can hear children screaming when some of them see us.

Oh, my goodness! We've arrived!

We've made it!

THEY GREET EACH OTHER

I'll never forget the sense of relief as the villagers came out

to meet us.

THEY GREET EACH OTHER

THEY LAUGH

Oh, my goodness, everybody!

I've got tears welling up inside me.

He doesn't know what it is!

THEY CHAT

Has he seen white people, foreigners, in the village before?

It's what you meant when you said forgotten people

in a forgotten land.

Yes, absolutely.

No-one's rich here. Nobody knows they exist here.

Yeah.

A humanitarian group called the Free Burma Rangers was also

operating covertly behind the lines, delivering vital medical care

that was being denied to the Chin by the government.

They were risking everything.

If you were caught by the Burmese authorities doing this,

what would happen to you?

If they catch us, they will kill us.

Is it really... Is that really possible?

Yes, it's possible.

All the Burmese regime wants us to do is to surrender but, instead

of surrendering, we're trying to help ourselves,

we're trying to stand up

so there's a ray of hope we can build.

We were due to stay the night in another village,

but then everything changed.

A messenger arrived with news that a large army patrol had suddenly

appeared in the next village and might be heading

in our direction.

I think we should go back.

Oh, my God!

We decided to make a risky dash under cover of darkness back

to the border. Every noise from the jungle

might have been an ambush.

It was one of the longest nights of my life.

It's one thing to cross a river like this in daylight.

It's completely different crossing it at night.

WHISPERS: We're just a few minutes from the border

between Burma and India.

We've just sent one of our village guides ahead of us

to try and check if there's

any Burmese military down by the river.

Suddenly, there were voices.

Some people are coming. Put the light out.

MAN CALLS OUT

That's our guide.

Bloody hell!

I thought we were screwed then.

We've made it at least to the border.

But there is somebody over there.

I think, if we can try and signal to them,

we might be able to get back.

The locals who'd built the zip wire had come to the river at four

in the morning to help us escape.

Hello!

OK.

India, here we come!

We're back in India! We've made it!

Cheery has to be one of the bravest of the thousands of remarkable

and brilliant people I've been honoured to meet on my travels.

Welcome back to India. Thank you.

Welcome back to India too. And thank you for taking us.

Thanks for coming.

And now you experience a very different life in Burma, isn't it?

It's an incredibly different life, yeah.

I mean, it's a totally... It's a totally different world.

Some of my dodgiest...

It's like Alice In Wonderland meets Narcos.

..and most dangerous adventures.

How does he know it's al-Shabaab?